


You Are Here

by agoodwoman



Category: The X-Files
Genre: F/M, detour, season 5
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-23
Updated: 2015-07-23
Packaged: 2018-04-10 18:49:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,056
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4403165
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/agoodwoman/pseuds/agoodwoman





	You Are Here

 

Skinner had been so disturbed at his problematic agents’ ability to duck out from even the simplest request to "attend a partnership and communications conference for team building" and somehow Mulder found Mothmen. Correction, Mulder found invisible, man eating creatures in the Florida woods that almost cost Mulder his life. Not really but his arm was in a sling for the next week. The consequence to their side trip was to then go on loan to other sections far away from the X-Files.  
Skinner ensured Mulder would heal up nicely in the bullpen at the VCU, doing paperwork and background checks. Scully had been sent to Quantico to lend a hand while an instructor was off sick. The time apart had left Mulder itching to get back to his office. He checked in regularly if there were new X-Files coming in but if they were, they weren't being sent down to the basement.

  
More recently, the last two weeks Skinner sent them to Baltimore to help in the field office. The look of offense on Mulder’s face when they met with him Monday morning to discuss their fate was priceless. Scully would have laughed if the situation had allowed for it.  
When they arrived on last Monday, she sat happily at her own desk and looked at him pointedly. Mulder got what she meant without saying a word - communication seminar be damned. He knew what she meant by just a look. She needed a desk but the basement office just wasn't big enough. How many partners could say that without exchanging a word?

 

On their first morning drive out she allowed Mulder some ranting for the offense of being sent out to Baltimore after just getting back from working with the VCU. The second morning Scully mentioned that he might have done better to go to the conference. The third morning she opted to drive herself. By Friday morning, Mulder was at her building, coffees in hand and ready to make amends. The drive to Baltimore wasn’t exactly pleasant on her own and she accepted the coffee but insisted they take her car.  
After two days, they had their fill of working in bull pens, reporting into Skinner as well as whomever was their SAC. They showed up, Scully looked at doing any autopsies if there were any DEC's (deceased), looked over medical files, and applied her expertise where she could while Mulder worked with her creating a profile and they were sent on their way. They had been used as tools as a little punishment and Mulder had enough.

  
That Thursday morning, on the last leg of their four week punishment, he was walking through the bullpen to their desks. They were facing one another and Mulder knew there was a battleship joke in there somewhere if the pain of Scully’s one-night stand wasn’t still stinging him, even after her cancer and the remission.  
He shed his FBI bomber jacket, that they were all wearing like good little soldiers for their field assignment, and hung it over the back of his chair. He saw two coffees on the edge of Scully's desk but no purse or jacket.

  
Agent Sherman approached Mulder with an envelope in hand and his camera bag over one shoulder. "Hey Mulder."

  
Sherman was one of the few agents in Baltimore Mulder could stand. He didn't call him Spooky, they talked about sports and he never made any sexist remarks about Scully. Even when Mulder was there the other agents, not specific to Baltimore, liked to call Scully the missus behind her back.

  
"How's it going Sherman?" Mulder asked, glancing down at the blond haired agent.

  
"Knicks bit it last night. I lost fifty bucks to Pullin. He's going to gloat for the next three weeks." Sherman said with a slight groan. Mulder nodded but he warned him not to take that bet. "They need us out at the site in twenty."

  
"Where's Scully?" Mulder asked, his eyes still scanning the room. Usually his tall stature helped spot her red hair among the other agents.

  
"I think she was at the lab," Sherman reported and handed Mulder the 5x7 envelope. "Uh... Well... This is for you."

  
Mulder looked down and opened the brown paper casing. Inside was a picture of he and Scully from last week. They were standing next to one another reading the headline that had just been printed.

  
"I was testing my new lens and uh... I developed it here but I'm the only one who saw it. I didn't want anyone teasing you about getting a picture... Uh you know."

  
"Hey this is great," Mulder said and patted Sherman on the back. He tucked it back in the envelope and slipped the picture inside his jacket pocket. "Thanks a lot. I'll hang it up in the office or something."

  
Scully approached them just then and smiled at them. "Good morning. Hallorren wants us at the site in twenty."

  
Mulder picked up his jacket in one hand and the coffee that was obviously meant for him in the other. Scully had added two sugars to his, just like he liked it. 

_Ah, Scully._

  
"Do you want to ride with us?" Mulder offered Sherman as they headed out to the parking lot.

 

"No, I'm riding with the forensics team, thanks though," Sherman said and headed off towards the bus.

 

"Take my car?" Mulder offered as they headed out.

  
They had been riding together in the mornings from DC out to Baltimore however usually taking Scully's car. She tossed the keys at him and got in the passenger side. When Mulder had offered to take his car she mentioned that she had no intent on sitting inside the trash bin he called a car. He took that to mean he needed to clean it out and did just that on last night when Scully was at dinner with her mother.

  
Mulder tossed his jacket in the back of the car and Scully sipped at her coffee carefully, licking her lips at the foam from her latte. Mulder had noted since her cancer went into remission she indulged in a few things she normally wouldn't have. A flavoured latte, half a cookie Mulder bought from the food cart, a few more french fries from his plate than usual.

  
"I cleaned it," he pointed out.

  
Scully looked around at the lack of garbage that normally littered her feet and glanced at the back seat of the sedan. "Smells clean in here too."

  
"Vacuumed the seats, got a new air freshener and used amour-all on the dash," he bragged. "I can do yours later if you like, Miss Scully."

  
"Do you have a rag stuffed in the back pocket of your tight jeans while you're detailing?" she quipped in a bit of a breathy tone and Mulder glanced over at her so quickly the car jerked. Scully grabbed at the dash. " _Jesus,_ Mulder!"

  
He would never admit it but when she did let slip a flirtatious comment his heart leaped. "Sorry."

  
Scully continued to look around the car. "You did the inside of the windows too."

  
"Maybe I'll set up a little side business in the bureau parkade," Mulder said thoughtfully as they turned off towards the crime scene. "I think I could get a lot of business from the secretaries."

  
Scully sat up more straight in her seat and crossed her arms. "Probably."

  
The edge of Mulder's mouth turned up in a grin. "Hey, you gave me the idea."

  
"A few of the male agents might appreciate it too," she pointed out.

  
Mulder frowned a little. "Maybe.”

  
Scully pursed her lips. "You might be a little too old to be someone's boy toy, anyway."

  
Mulder gasped and put a hand against his chest. "How dare you!"

  
That earned Mulder a full Scully laugh and he joined in with her. 

 

*****

 

After spending 8 hours canvassing and interviewing eye witnesses, Mulder drove them straight back to the Hoover building.

  
"Mulder, my car is still at the field office," she reminded him as he pulled into his stall.

  
"We'll go back there tomorrow. I want to talk to Skinner together. Tell him we're done with this being loaned out like someone’s crappy hammer bull shit," he said and shut the car off. "I'm sick of it. I can't do another week of being in a bull pen working on these cases. I do a profile, they get you to do some autopsies and then we just do interviews and junk that junior agents should be taking care of. I've worked too long on the X-Files to get loaned out to VCU like a tool."

  
"Just you?" Scully asked.

  
Mulder shook his head quickly. "No, I mean we. Obviously we."

  
"Mulder, there haven't been any X-Files coming in, we would have been doing paperwork anyway," Scully reminded him.

  
"Yeah that's what he says," he argued, his voice getting more tense. "I bet he's sitting on a stack of files that need to be looked at."

  
"Or nothing has come in," she replied as they headed into the elevator vestibule.

  
"I want to check the office and talk to Skinner just in case," he replied opening the door for her.

  
Mulder punched the buttons to go down first. "Really quick and then I’ll take you for dinner? Italian?"

  
There was a little place in Baltimore that served bruschetta, caprese salad and shrimp scampi Scully couldn’t turn down. That and a glass of red was as close as they got to having a date without it being a date. The tablecloths were faded and the music only Italian opera but it also had all the off-putting components for Mulder to call it charming and Scully not to mind it.

  
They headed down three floors and through the building towards the long hallway to their basement office. Mulder unlocked the office door and tossed his jacket on the coat rack where the envelope he received earlier that day fell to the floor.

  
"What's this?" Scully asked, approaching the desk.

  
Mulder gestured for her to open it and she did. "Sherman gave it to me today and I realized we don't have any pictures of us... It's from last week."

  
"I see that," Scully replied.

  
"It’s a shame there’s a tall monkey in it,” he said, talking about himself. He wasn’t that furry but apparently any chest, arm or leg hair when you’re a swimmer is enough to get you to be called the Sea Monkey by your team. Scully was glad she had that item of information in her back pocket.

  
“Sherman just took this?” Scully asked, hoping he wasn’t getting the wrong idea about them. Not that she wasn’t beyond caring at this point. Her first week at Quantico recently proved to be an exercise in patience regarding the questions about her partner. It did’t help much that Mulder called her three times a day.

  
“I brought him by the office on Monday when you were knee deep in body parts, I guess he noticed we did’t have one. But it’s nice, it’s us... I like it.”

  
They were sharing a paper, standing too close than usual partners did and the yellow letters of their jackets against the deep blue of the coats. Scully tucked her chin down, her blanket of red hair almost hiding her face as a flush took over her cheeks.

  
A call rang down to the desk and Mulder answered it. “Yeah, Mulder.” A short pause. “What?”

  
Mulder hung up the phone abruptly and sat down harshly at his desk.

  
“What?”

  
“Just got a call we’re needed in Dallas, with the field office, nothing special.” Mulder pulled his hands down his face and shouted in frustration. “What are we doing!”  
Scully saw the post its sitting on the desk, pulled out a pen and quickly scribbled on it. She slapped it on the space ship on the poster and hung up the photo near it, on the cork board.

  
Mulder leaned in. “You are here.”

  
“You’re still here, Mulder,” she said, grabbing his hand. “Maybe you haven’t paid enough penance to Skinner yet. A case will come in.”

  
Mulder looked down where her hand grasped hers and he felt the heat go up through his body. “Okay. Maybe we can buy you some cowboy boots.”

 


End file.
